Award-winning authors Tim Weiner and Greg Grandin will discuss their new books on two of America's most controversial public figures. Weiner's One Man Against the World and Grandin's Kissinger's Shadow examine the ongoing legacy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The authors will discuss how Nixon's and Kissinger's actions and policies led first to the collapse of America's Cold War national security warfare state and then its restoration in new form, a restored imperial presidency (based on evermore spectacular displays of violence, more intense secrecy, and an increasing use of war and militarism to leverage domestic dissent and polarization for political advantage) capable of moving forward into a post-Vietnam world. The event will be moderated by Professor Marilyn Young and is cosponsored by the NYU Center for the Humanities.

About the Participants

GREG GRANDIN is professor of history at NYU and is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in the UK. His book Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Grandin has contributed to The New York Times, Harper’s, The London Review of Books, The Nation, The Boston Review, The Los Angeles Times, and The American Historical Review. His latest book, Kissinger’s Shadow, was published in August.

TIM WEINER is the author of five books. Legacy of Ashes, his history of the CIA, won the National Book Award. His journalism on secret government programs received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered war and terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and other nations. He directs the Carey Institute's nonfiction residency program in upstate New York and teaches as an Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton. His most recent book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, was published this spring.

MARILYN YOUNG is one of the most eminent authorities on the history of American foreign relations and the war in Vietnam. A professor of history at NYU, she is the author of numerous award-winning books on the history of the conflict, including, most notably, The Vietnam Wars: 1945–1990.